The Personal Side of Bias, Prejudice, and Oppression

     Just the other day I was strolling through on Facebook and came across a story a lady posted titled "Don’t judge a book by its cover". The story was a picture of a man passed out in the sidewalk with a Coke bottle beside him. The story is about a woman who walked past a man at a shopping center that appeared to be homeless sleeping on the sidewalk. As she went into a store and as she was checking out asked the lady what was going on with the man on the sidewalk? The cashier informed her that he worked in the area and would typically sit out on the path on his break. Today was the first time she had seen him laid out on the sidewalk. As they looked out the store window, people are walking over him, taking pictures, and calling him names. As the lady walks out of the store, she slows down to take a better look at the guy and notices that he is foaming at the mouth. She yells for someone to call 911 as she turns him over, he begins to foam at the mouth even more. Both her and the cashier called 911 for an ambulance. To make a long story short, the man had suffered a stroke. He was not drunk or homeless.

     This story bothered me to the core because if any of the people that walked by talking about the man or taking pictures would have taken the time to look at him, they may have noticed that something was wrong. Especially the people that were familiar with the man and saw that he wasn’t acting himself. Due to people jumping to conclusions about this man’s circumstance, he could have died as a result. Today people have lost their sense of humanity for caring for another human being; people are more concerned about themselves. Together we all must change the way we care about one another and be more aware of the people and situations around us.